EXPRESSION ART OF THE APOCALYPSE

Expression Art of the Apocalypse! The
city is like an ominous factory fuelled by infinite hordes of
faceless denizens. The crowds a caught in an endless spiral moving
machinery that produces only to destroy. The collective human
unconscious is infected with cold nihilistic ideologies ruled by
superficial, commercial and selfish desires. Under the control of
flickering hypnotic messages the metropolises savage actions permeate
throughout the entire world. Breeding suffering and self destruction
the urban center turns a blind eye to the chaos it spreads in every
direction. Like a nuclear blast the city leaves devastation in it's
wake but one can only wonder how long it can last before suffering a
similar fate.

“The
Apocalypse” drawings made up the second part of a narrative
diptych. The companion pieces depicted the city as a still graveyard
type scene with tombstone skyscrapers and endless crowds of faceless
denizens disappearing into the horizon. Coupled with these
destructive images showing the same city under the duress of
annihilation, the artworks suggest that our current lifestyle is a
dead end and if we don't change we will face destruction. The
graveyard scenes signify many concerns regarding the state of the
city including alienation and consumerism while the apocalypse scenes
symbolize a warning towards future days.

It
is interesting to note that these images were created in the fall of
2000 and first exhibited in the Ontario College of Art & Design
in March 2001. When I continued to show this collection the following
year many people easily made connections between the imagery and the
events of 9/11 however the work was actually done a year
before the attacks. I was trying to express a surrealist and
emotional concern and not any particular event. Some of my concerns included the environment, war and psychological sustainability and the fall of the twin towers was certainly an example of the sort of future I feared. There were over 100
small variations of these images and 3 large mural sized ink drawings
created for the major exhibition of “HEY APATHY!” which opened in
Jan. 2002.